Each document, reference, patent application or patent cited in this text is expressly incorporated herein in their entirety by reference, which means that it should be read and considered by the reader as part of this text. That the document, reference, patent application, or patent cited in this text is not repeated in this text is merely for reasons of conciseness.
The following discussion of the background to the invention is intended to facilitate an understanding of the present invention only. It should be appreciated that the discussion is not an acknowledgement or admission that any of the material referred to was published, known or part of the common general knowledge of the person skilled in the art in any jurisdiction as at the priority date of the invention.
In a multi-cell wireless network, there are multiple network access points, which may be base stations or fixed stations, with which devices, such as mobile devices or mobile stations, may establish a connection in order to access the wireless network. For example, the wireless communication technology used may be Wi-Fi. The mobile device may establish a connection with one of the access points to access the wireless network. However, as the mobile device moves relative to the serving access point, the connection with the serving access point may be lost or dropped due to, for example, insufficient signal strength to support the connection. Therefore, in such a wireless network, when the connection with the serving access point becomes unsatisfactory or less desirable, there exists a handover or handoff procedure for triggering the mobile device to establish a new connection with a target access point providing better signal strength, in an attempt to maintain continuous communication with the wireless network.
In a multi-cell wireless network, geospatial data relating to the positions of the access points (or access point topology) in the wireless network may be of benefit when deciding to and/or implementing an action such as, for example, making a handover decision and/or when executing a handover operation. The geospatial data is also referred to as geographic information system (“GIS”) information and is typically stored in a network management system.
Conventionally, a network operator manually enters the geospatial data in the network management system for the wireless network. This manual data entry is often time-consuming and expensive as well as being error-prone.
Geospatial data is also typically required when installing a Fixed Mobile Convergence (“FMC”) system or deploying FMC solutions to existing communication systems. FMC is a term used in the art for the integration of fixed and mobile networks to provide a single communication network foundation. For example, in an enterprise environment, FMC solutions can be applied to provide users with seamless services using a combination of fixed and mobile networks.
However, due to the time and costs involved with manual configurations when deploying FMC solutions (such as the above-described manual data entry of geospatial data in the network management system), there exist adoption barriers which may cause enterprises to either delay or decide against implementing FMC solutions.
International Patent Application No. PCT/AU02/00381, Publication No. WO 02/080597, filed 27 Mar. 2002 discloses a method for determining base station topology in a wireless network. However, the present inventors have identified a number of deficiencies associated with the method described in PCT/AU02/00381 for determining base station topology. For example, the method disclosed in PCT/AU02/00381 fails to account for propagation losses in the signal strength detected by an access point due to blocking objects, such as walls, in the path. As another example, the base station topology is not determined with respect to an absolute reference frame (e.g., an earth reference coordinate frame). As a result, the base station topology obtained may not accurately represent or correspond with the actual position of the base stations since it cannot be orientated and/or scaled in space. To at least some extent, the present invention builds on the invention described in PCT/AU02/00381. Therefore, PCT/AU02/00381 is expressly incorporated herein in it's entirely by reference as if fully set forth herein.
It is against this background that the present invention has been developed.